Walloping Gas Prices Making for Weary Workers

Nearing an all-time high, gas prices are the workplace topic du jour this summer, resurfacing interests in telecommuting, reducing willingness to commute and upping expectations of managers to ease the fiscal burden.

Gas prices, nearing an all-time high, are the workplace topic du jour this summer and studies find that employees are turning to job-hunting closer to home, telecommuting and asking their managers for help to ease the extra fiscal burden.
Eighty percent of the workforce would like to work from home, but cant because of managers concerns over not being able to monitor their staff, according to a study released July 12 by SureTime, a maker of billing assurance software based in Saint Cloud, Fla.

Of the respondents, 31 percent said they were considering finding a job closer to home because of rising gasoline prices, and only 6 percent surveyed said their managers were taking steps to help them manage rising fuel costs.

These results are in line with a June Monster.com poll where 90 percent of 8,000 respondents said that their companies were doing nothing to ease the pain of high gas prices.
Only 4 percent said their companies were increasing mileage reimbursement for travel, and 2 percent said more flexibility with telecommuting was being offered.

Eighty-three percent of respondents in an accompanying Monster poll said that rising gas prices affected both their jobs searches and willingness to commute.
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A survey released July 11 by Manpower, a Milwaukee-based employment services provider, found that persistently high fuel costs are cutting into U.S. workers leisure time activities and are increasing job turnover, with 76 percent of respondents saying that rising gas prices are impacting their work-life balance.
Twenty-four percent of respondents employers in the Manpower study offered telecommuting to assist gas price-burdened workers. Twenty-one percent organized carpools and 17 percent subsidized mass transit as an employee benefit.
Meanwhile, AAA (American Automobile Associate) said July 12 that local and national gas prices are hovering near an all-time high near the $3-per-gallon mark. The average price for a gallon of regular gas jumped to $2.97 from $2.90 in June.
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